Comfort
by Saphira112
Summary: Post-Kyoto. Hisoka reflects on the fire and how it reminds him of every other case he and Tsuzuki had together and how much their relationship has changed. Tsuzuki/Hisoka


**A/N: A one-shot I was thinking about while stuck at S.O.A.R. in school (S.O.A.R. is like a study hall time to go to classes you need help in. You can only go to classes where you have that teacher. Otherwise, you get kicked out. Oh, and it's only on Wednesdays). I was in the tech lab, even though I didn't have that class, but it was fine, because there was a substitute. ANYWAY! I was in the tech lab and I kept thinking about how to update my other fics. I have wanted to write a shikigami story for some time, but I got no plot for it -tear- Plus, I haven't updated some of my other fics that I seriously need to get moving on (Please Save Me, Harem of the Pharaoh, Metal Heart, Healing Deep Wounds, etc). But this came to me while I was thinking of something for a shikigami story and my friend Kathy, who was sitting between me and Daniel, helped me think of a dark angsty one-shot. (Kathy tis good friend and story-idea person. Mwaha, fear her!) And so this is what came out. I hope you all enjoy! Note that Daniel has been transferred out by now and Kathy prefers the library to the computer lab –laughs– **

**Saphira Nakare Ruakara**

**P.S. This is not one of my best one-shots, but this is what happens when I can't update other fics and happen to be sitting next to my insane friends in a computer room with both writer's block, a soda, and Nightwish/Within Temptation music. Oh, and also have YnM manga lying around (namely books 2 and 3)**

Recommended listening: _Pale_ by **Within Temptation**

Comfort

One-shot

(Hisoka's P.O.V.)

"_It's okay now."_

He says it is okay now, he says everything will be all right; he says that I will be all right. I could feel the stinging in the back of my eyes, my deep, hollow green eyes that he had once said were alluring, bottomless, pools of emerald he could get lost in. I remembered his words well.

"_I could lose myself in your eyes."_

Could he really? How can such hollow eyes bring him so much comfort and support? What liquid was there to drown in when his eyes met mine? What could he see in the broken gems that I cannot see as I look at myself in the mirror? I could see nothing, nothing but a sheet of ice separating the outside world and my eyes, the same eyes that led to my soul. My soul, dark and tainted, stripped of innocence from long ago; how can he love such a thing? How can he think I am pure? Muraki took that from me long ago. He took it from me and tortures me with the memories every night. Every night, he's there, waiting to curse me over and over again, taking away my hopes of drowning in a pool of relief. The only thing I can feel is fear and with that fear comes the pain, again and again. He gains sick pleasure from doing this to me.

"_You're still innocent."_

Why?! Why would he say something so stupid to me? It's not even true!

"_You are you."_

He always thinks like that. Optimism. Something no one had given me until I had met him. But he's not all fun and games and like the child he isn't. The child he shouldn't be. Despite the pain I know he tries to hide, I can see. I can see that he always is hiding behind a façade of happiness that seemed to work up until Kyoto. Up until then, I had been fooled just like everyone else had been. I saw the grin, the cheery smiles, and feel the gentleness, but deep down, deep inside, he was in so much pain, he should had crumpled under the weight long ago. But he didn't. He's still here. All because I asked him to.

"_I want you to exist even if just for me! I don't want to be left all alone!"_

Those words continue to ring in my ears to this day. My words. Not his. Mine. Mine alone. My words, words I had never received had suddenly gone flying from my mouth in a whirlwind of emotion as I had thrown myself at him, clinging to him as if he were my afterlife lifeline. I could feel everything then.

I could feel it; the sorrow, the sadness, the pain, the mixture of insanity that his heart had twisted together and driven him over the edge. His eyes, as blank and clear as water, could hardly see me as memories flashed behind them in a frenzied dance, blocking all reality and reminiscing in the past, as though it were a salvation, but a false one at that. A false salvation that only deepened his pain, deeper than the deepest crevice, deeper than a bottomless pool… I thought it would never end. It never did.

I forgot all about my life and what I had been through. As soon as I felt what Tsuzuki did, I forgot all about it. I didn't care about it at all. Nothing about what I had been through could possibly compare to his. My neglect, my parents, Muraki… nothing could compare. At first glance, it probably might, but I know better. It wasn't even close.

Those children in his village. They abused him. They threw rocks at him. They drove him away. They killed his sister, the only one who had been able to take care of him and the only one who cared for him. They hurt him so much, but he still believed in them. I couldn't believe someone who had been abused that hard and that long could possibly think that optimistically. It wasn't possible. Tsuzuki proved me wrong.

I had felt those emotions before, before he had been taken away, before the fire, and that alone put me out for three days. But as I grasped onto him in those fires from hell, I had felt everything again. They hit my barriers, breaking them down one by one, but I didn't care. I couldn't care. I couldn't so long as Tsuzuki was willing to die in these fires by himself. These fires would erase him forever. He wouldn't exist anymore. I didn't want to know that, but I knew. I didn't want to face it, but I did.

"_It's his wish to die. We have to respect that."_

Hearing those words had made me want to scream, scream into the face of the person who had spoken those words. I wasn't going to be crazy enough to just sit back and watch him die. I didn't know at the time, but I had grown a deep affection for him, a deep connection that actually made me feel as though it were right to be with him and everyone else, as if I had finally been accepted. Even before Kyoto, I had felt his affection.

Queen Camellia. A case I had long wished to forget, but couldn't. I could never forget what had happened. The gunshot, a once comforting sound, now made my ears bleed and eyes water every time I heard it. And I heard it whenever I thought of the Queen Camellia case. I had to kill Tsubaki, something I couldn't do, something I shouldn't have done, but I did. I killed her. It left bile on my tongue that refused to be washed away by the strong ocean tide.

In the beginning of the case, she had desired to dance with me. She grew affectionate towards me, but I didn't feel the same for her in the beginning. I wasn't sure how to react. And then when she thought it to be a good idea to press an unsuspecting kiss upon my tainted lips, I had reeled from the shock and horror. Why did she decide to do that? We had barely just met and already, she wanted to become close. She was too forward, too obsessed with her own thoughts.

She had made a bet with herself. If she fell in love with me—something I didn't think would ever be possible for me—she would give up her love for Muraki. But as she lay on the cold floor of the ship with me kneeling over her, she had a bittersweet smile on her face, telling me in a quiet that she couldn't do it. She said it was because she still believed in him. She wasn't in love with the criminal or the twisted part of him. She loved the man in him. That was it. It was like looking infatuation in the face, only a bit stronger. She felt so strongly towards him and she believed he was still some good in him. She didn't know that the good part of him, if it had ever existed in the first, had died a long time ago, so long, it had probably died before I had even entered the world.

Tsubaki was a gambler. She had tried to win both ways, but she lost twice. She knew Muraki was drugging her and she allowed it. She admitted to not being able to tell the difference between good and evil now, but she still believed. She still believed in the doctor part of him. That was probably why she was supposed to die, but she didn't. She clung to life to watch him, hoping silently from afar for his good side to emerge. I doubt it ever did. I told her how he didn't even treat us like human beings. I was so frustrated with this. Why couldn't she see? She couldn't. She was blind. She silenced me then.

"_I don't deserve to hear what you're about to say…Save that for someone…who deserves you."_

Who deserved me? I was tainted. She knew that, but she believed I was pure. She raised her hand to my cheek. She had pleaded with me to kill her. I didn't want to. I couldn't. I didn't want to be…_ him_. I didn't want to feel the satisfaction he felt. I didn't want to know what it was like. He told me we were the same. I relayed the same words to Tsuzuki in the helicopter as I stared down at my bloodied hands, the blood of my victim… the blood of an innocent. I had been so scared. I didn't want to feel what Muraki felt. I didn't want to see lives how he saw them. I could still hear the gunshot echoing in my ears over the loud roar of the helicopter in flight, over the screams from below and over the loud washes sinking the ship. It was as though invisible hands gripped my heart and were choking it as my chest constricted. I couldn't lock it up inside of me. I was pale, scared, and shaking.

I had begun to cry. I had never felt this fear before and now that I did, I wanted it to go away. I wanted my hands to be clean again, but even as my tears fell unto my hands, the life essence remained, unaffected by the springs of water behind my eyes. Tsuzuki drew me into his arms then, pulling me close and stroking my hair, whispering soft words into my ear, reassuring me, denying the words my murderer had uttered to my face. But I knew. I was cruel. Cruel and dishonest. Killing Tsubaki wasn't just to free her… it was another way of leaving her. I couldn't connect with her. Her feelings were elsewhere. The comfort I could feel coming from my elder partner on Queen Camellia covered up what he felt as well. It wasn't noticeable in the case before, the Devil's Trill case, but… more than his share of feelings were more open in that case than in other ones. I didn't know what I felt when I saw those emotions and felt them for the first time.

Devil's Trill. A sad case, a case where more than innocent lives were at stake, a case that I remembered so well that it overpowered the Queen Camellia feelings by far, even though it came before.

It was when I first saw him, first saw him at the construction site that I began to reel. Hijiri looked as if he were my long lost twin. We looked exactly alike, minus the hair color, of course, but even though we looked alike, we had to have been no more opposite one another, just like an oxymoron. We looked the same, but he was pure, innocent, not knowing the dangers of the real world. His own little world revolved around his dreams, his life's ambitions. My dreams had died long ago, burned into ashes and scattered to a strong east wind. My life, or rather, afterlife, was nothing compared to his real life. I had a fake life and I was living it. He was alive, I was dead. It was on this case that I began to grow with weird emotions I knew I shouldn't have been feeling.

The first was pity. After we had saved him from his own suicide, we were ordered to watch over him. At one point, Tsuzuki had to go check up on something involving the case and I was supposed to stay in case Hijiri woke up. As soon as that infirmary door had closed, I stared down at the fallen violinist. He didn't know the horrors of the real world and the cycle of life. He didn't know the hate I had once felt from everyone around me, nor the fear of my empathy. It burns to say it now, but Hijiri had looked like a fallen angel, a pure opposite of me. It was the me I should've been had I lived into my later teens. But it wasn't. It was someone else. Already, I knew I was envying him. Envy, one of the seven deadly sins. It didn't really matter to me, though. I was already dead. When I decided to move on, what I felt as a shinigami probably wouldn't affect my place in the real afterlife. Not that it mattered.

But I could also feel jealously coming from deep inside of me. Jealously for his innocence and closer connection with people. Even with my partner. Whilst I pretended not to care, I envied him and was jealous as how he was so affectionate around my partner. And my partner, in turn, was affectionate to him, in a more-than-just-a-friend kind of way. I was jealous, jealous because it was an emotion I never had and probably never would have even after I died. But I yearned for it, even more so than to be Tsuzuki's equal. But I would never admit that to anyone. It was only when Tsuzuki's emotions didn't come through that I began to feel the need stronger than before.

They didn't come through because they were blocked… blocked by the demon, Sagatanusu. We hadn't known it at the time, but Tsuzuki was gone. He was standing there, looking exhausted, but same as ever and he tried to be happy, but demons were never happy or cheerful. Learning that was the hard way. I knew he wasn't there. He was there, but he wasn't. Ironically, it was like an oxymoron. Happy demon was an oxymoron and oxymorons didn't apply to human lives when it came to emotions, at least not to me.

Hijiri had been in danger then, the night Tsuzuki came back, the night of the full moon. I had to stop the violinist. He had been confused and I couldn't tell him what it was. I wanted to make sure I was right and for some reason, I didn't want Hijiri to get caught in the middle. Turns out my instincts paid off and saved Hijiri's life.

I dressed in his clothes and put in a contact lens that I created with a simple spell, making it looks like Hijiri's transplanted cornea. I had half a mind to dye my hair, but I already knew there wasn't enough time. I quickly made a wig out of another simple spell and adorned it before hiding out in Hijiri's room while I sent him on his way to the ministry. He would be safe there. Only I could deal with how it was now.

It was painful… Even as Tsuzuki walked in the room, nothing was there. It was as though he wasn't there. No emotions came through to me. Normally, they'd be as loud as a blare horn in my ear, but no. It was deadly quiet. It somewhat unsettled me, but I couldn't back down now. I had started this and I was going to end it. I wasn't going to back down, no way. I was going to be Tsuzuki's equal someday. If I couldn't do this, I wouldn't do anything in the future.

I made a light conversation when he came in. I talked about the sea fire that glowed beyond the simple glass of the window. I knew little about the sea fires, but it was enough to beat around the bush with. Tsuzuki was never as aggressive normally as he had been this night. He simply came out with his words, asking me for a thank-you. I did thank him, as he wanted, but with each word he said then, he took another step, then another one, ever closer to me. I swallowed my fear.

"_That's not good enough…"_

"_Well, what can I do? What would you like me to do? If there's anything I can…"_

I had been stuttering, I knew that. I hadn't really meant to say the word "anything" to him at this moment, but I had. It was probably because of my empathy desperately reaching for an emotion of his to grasp, but there were none. None to hold on to, none to comfort me now. It was me, alone, facing down this demon-possessed shinigami that was my partner.

"_Anything? Okay, then…"_

He went behind me then, putting one arm around my chest and the other at my leg, my back to his broad chest. The fear of memories I longed to forget came rushing back, but I pushed them aside, intent on growing stronger and enduring whatever he was going to do.

"_Let's start here…"_

I struggled as he began to undo the room's curtains that I had placed around me, very slowly. The fear I had swallowed came rushing back in less than a millisecond and I struggled harder. Pain assaulted my shoulder and I could hardly bear to look as pain exploded in my nerves. With a cleaver, he had sliced neatly through my arm, severing the muscles and tearing at the flesh. My eyes had widened in shock at this sudden aggressive action and it was then that I felt an emotion. An emotion of the demon's. Maliciousness. Blood-thirsty.

Hard laughter assaulted my ears as he continued to slice through my arm. I felt my mouth open and a scream erupt from the back of my throat as pain shot after pain shot assaulted my immortal body, tearing away greedily to my flesh. Outside, the moon turned a bright red and the clouds tinted themselves in blood. My blood.

I lay practically deformed against the window, my eyes simply staring out, still wide, staring at my partner, the partner who I had come to trust, the partner who had done this to me. But he didn't know it was me. He thought I was Hijiri. Sagatanasu thought I was Hijiri. I wasn't. But I wasn't about to say that.

"_The blood and the blade look lovely next to your pale white skin…"_

It wasn't Tsuzuki talking, it was the demon. But even so, I never wished to hear those words again. Muraki left them as bile in my mouth. My mind screamed for Tsuzuki not to say any more of my blood, the blood that had been shed too many times and a blade that looked similar to the one that had carved my curse into my skin. I slightly turned my head away, but Tsuzuki only brought it forward again. My eyes widened even more in fear. He reached down with his free hand and took the knife. He dragged it lazily across my cheek, barely cutting into it, as though he meant to tease me in this way. I didn't want this, but it wasn't about what I wanted, really. I was doing my duty as a shinigami, I couldn't help it.

I let out a cry as Tsuzuki plunged the dagger into my left eye, twisting it and pulling it out sharply, taking my eye with it. It burned as hellfire as my optical nerves exploded in torturous pain. Then he placed his hand to my cheek, catching the blood coming from my empty eye socket. He brought it to his lips and he lapped it up before standing, his white shirt covered in my blood.

I could only stare as he walked out of the room, leaving me alone in the silence. The silence I welcomed. It was a change from the malicious emotions I had felt only moments before. I mentally calculated the damage in my head. My left lung was ripped in half; my entire left side was decapitated, and everything else was a mess.

I coughed, spitting out the disgusting metallic taste of blood in my mouth. I brought my right hand up to touch the middle of my chest, over my heart and began to try to relax, allowing my shinigami capabilities to work faster. I probably didn't have much time. I had to heal my body as fast as possible. Turns out I had enough time, but I wasn't prepared for the fight. At all. More specifically, I wasn't prepared for the emotions I was about to feel.

The blood that had fallen from those angry eyes looked almost like tears. Tears of blood, tears filled with sorrow. There was nothing left inside of him. I could feel his emotions grabbing, reaching for something to hold onto, trying to cling to me in a futile attempt. I didn't want to feel them, but at the same time, I didn't want them to go away, either, for fear that the owner of those emotions would disappear forever.

I had then used all my power, all the energy I had left inside my immortal body and I used the only spell I could; the Reibaku. I entered his being, separating his soul from the demon's, taking it in my hands. His _soul_ had been in _my_ hands. One wrong move and it would've died altogether. And although I had never held a soul before in my hands and protected it from demons and dark magic alike, it felt as if I had always done.

I knew how to hold his soul without letting it shatter. But he wouldn't know it was I who had "saved" him. It had been a simple trick, really, mainly because I couldn't face my own confusion at the time, confusion with my own knowledge and instinct. How had I known how to hold his soul? How did I know to care? How did I know… at all?

So it was a trick. I had tricked him before; I could do it again, no matter how much it made me feel guilty afterwards and now. The mind only saw what it wanted to see and in this case, it was literal. He wouldn't see me because I wouldn't let him. He wouldn't see me because I'm probably not the one he wanted to see at all. So I disguised myself as Hijiri, the one he had promised to protect from the demon, the one who cared much for his well-being, and the one who he – dare I say it? – _felt_ something for. I could feel it as I placed my hand on his shoulder, the shoulder of his soul. How did I know it would be the shoulder I would later cry on?

Then Tsuzuki had broken free.

Argh. I'm sighing again… It's been a few months since Kyoto, now that I think about it. And I suppose things have turned out for the better. Tsuzuki and I spent recovery in the infirmary for a whole month, mostly me for a splitting headache from the emotional overload and him to recover his own mind; his self. Even then, lying next to him in the infirmary, just one bed apart, I couldn't define my feelings. I couldn't. And after all that had happened in that burning building blazing with fire that could've disintegrated my soul, my emotions were as confusing as ever.

Even when we could've both died and never returned, turned to nothing – such a concept – I didn't voice any of my feelings other than those words. But he understood. That was all that mattered, right?

"Hisoka?"

I turned my head sharply as my name was whispered in the dark room and my eyes locked with vibrant purple jewels looking at me through the shadows. Tsuzuki…

He sat up, not breaking contact with me. "Are you all right, Hisoka?"

I looked at him for a moment, as if wondering why he'd ask me that, when I realized that I had dried tearstains on my face and that I was shivering a little. Tsuzuki then put his arms around me and instantly, I felt warmth seep into my skin, the close contact thanks to me being shirtless. His emotions seeped into me, making me feel just a bit more comfortable.

When I didn't give him an answer, he repeated his question quietly, eyes genuinely concerned. I didn't hesitate this time.

"I'm okay now."

And this time it was the truth.


End file.
